About Face Antoinetteís ëBerlin Storiesí Focuses on Portraits of Berliners by Gary Tischler The artist known as Antoinette was standing among a group of admirers and questioners on the second floor of the Goethe-Institut, surrounded by her life, dreams and people. You got the gist of what she was saying, even if your German was only a wispy childhood memory. "Perhaps," she said, by way of answering a question about future work, "Washington stories?" With her long, sleek brown hair and a striped jacket, she carried herself with a certain edgy elegance and grace amid the disappearing reception food and the viewers studying her large portraits on the walls. The pieces are part of an exhibition called "Antoinette: Berlin Stories," which focuses primarily on portraits of contemporary Berlinersósome very big and important, some just big, and all interesting and riveting. The pastel chalk portraits are assayed in thick colors and lines that appear to evoke or somehow spill out a secret soul. The exhibition at the downtown Goethe-Institut, along with works on display at the German Historical Institute, is sprinkled with other works from the Antoinette oeuvre and palette. At the Goethe-Institut, for instance, there are a few selections from Antoinetteís series of dramatically powerful and fantastical self-portraits that stemmed from her interaction with her portrait subjects. She calls them "depictions of my own state as prompted by my involvement with the other. They show my soul in relation to others." Angular, vertical and somehow resembling her own thin frame, the works show Antoinetteís face under assault or in engagement with dreamy elements struggling to surface. Two big works that are practically operatic, "Berlin Madonna" and "Vogelfutter am Moritzplatz (Bird Food on Moritzplatz)," glow with a kind of religiosity that gives due drama and credit to Berliners below the radar, emerging into radiance in garish but spectacular scenes. The theatrical, paint-like look and feel of her portraits, overheated like an aria and insistant on recognizing the invisible, probably comes natural to Antoinette. The artist comes from Dresden and lived in East Berlin before the wall came down. In the helter-skelter appearance of lean subjects is a quality that remembers the incompleteness and growling lack of basics in the old East Germany, which is often steamrolled in the new, much milder and prosperous united Germany. In addition, sheís earned the drama evident in her artwork, struggling as she studied and worked as a model, waitress, night watchperson and mail carrier, all while raising a child. The theatricality in some of her works might come from her experience in creating stage sets and murals, having worked for a production of Bertolt Brechtís "Mann Ist Mann" in Potsdam-Bablesberg in 1986 and designed murals in Saxony. Sheís also a highly respected sculptor. Even in catalogue reproductions, her work screams to escape the frame, the book and even the page. That quality is most evident in her portraits, which are a stunning achievement. Antoinette, who said sheís "addicted to faces," began the portrait series in 1999 to depict the people she knew, but soon enough the project grew to become a larger work on the people of Berlin. "I wanted to feel and understand this city through the people who shape it," she said. With that kind of scope, you will see movers and shakers, educators, politicians, leaders, but also street people, working people, a real estate broker, performers and artistsóin short, citizens and denizens, the light shining on them in 21st-century Berlin. Although the works resemble traditional portraiture in the sense that the subjects are often sitting or posed, they also smash boundaries and sometimes appear surreal. All are pastel chalk portraits, but they have the vividness of thick oil paintings. Take, for instance, the portrait of Olaf Kunkat, described as someone in real estate. Heís standing straight up, his hands in his jacket pocket, the face dead on, wearing a striped blue jacket. He looks like an unfinished real estate salesman as opposed to a realtor, and the fact that the portrait is drawn only half in color gives it a certain ambivalence. Thereís also a haunting portrait of a Cuban woman living in Berlinówhite and dark mixing, while in the lower corner of the work we see odd little St. Nicholas figures. Thereís a great cross-section hereóitís a teeming exhibition and an even more teeming catalogue. The works are juicy and the people alive, such as the shrink who looks like an artist, the artist who looks like a shrink, the startlingly overflowing portrait of a street artist, or the bold look of a theater impresario who doesnít quite go with the ragged look of his costumes. They make an impression on us, as their reddish faces refuse to fade. "Antoinette: Berlin Stories" runs through Feb. 25 at the Goethe-Institut, 812 7th St., NW. For more information, please call (202) 289-1200 or visit www.goethe.de. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.